There is as much blood in a Bloody Mary, as there is actual resolve in the average New Year’s resolution. Today is January 24, and the pavement on the road to hell never looked so resplendent in abandoned self-betterment. Take a notion that struck you as clever just a few short months ago (Zumba dancers with nicotine patches, anyone?), douse it in a bucket of forward absolution, and sprinkle a light dusting of discipline on top. Bring to a quick boil on New Year’s Day and let the stir simmer for the twelve months to come. A worthy three weeks into it, and I can assure you, both the novelty and nobility of forcing changes unto life’s design will have worn as thin as a Nicki Minaj character. (Last seen inside a gym when the British left Palestine, your blogger, as a case in point, is tiring admittedly of the thrill of carb counting while spending more time with his family – blaming the waning enthusiasm for wanting to look less like a Care Bear on the two pre-adolescent sodium sales people which the Kraft Foods company has so insidiously installed in his own home. And predictably, he sides with Oscar Wilde – whom else? –, for “good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”)

In a professional context, I have noticed that IT leaders are ringing in the New Year with two items seemingly topping the list of their department’s make-it-happen resolutions: the respective implementation of a mobile strategy and a social media strategy for their businesses. While every business may have unique objectives and requirements for how to capture an increasingly mobile and social network-based audience, there are a number of common themes unfolding. Here I shall highlight one that has garnered strong interest in particular from a number of our clients in the retail sector: the “fusing” of the physical and the virtual worlds. In short, 2011 may yet be the year that will see the blending of brick-and-mortar with bits-and-bytes, as many consumers today are “glued to their smartphones and living on Facebook,” as a CIO client of mine recently put it.

Here’s what’s having the CIOs at global retail companies as excited as the residents of Wisteria Lane at the arrival of the UPS delivery man: today, shoppers with their smartphones in hand are browsing the aisles of brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers with the ability to look up any product information on the spot, including competitive pricing typically from Amazon.com. However, not all paths lead to Amazon; with powerful new mobile applications, merchants now have viable marketing tools to attract and entice customers with in-store specials tailored to the individual. For B&M retailers the future of one-to-one marketing may just have arrived. And if you’ve seen the movie “Minority Report,” you’ll know what I mean.

Think of the smartphone as a “bridge” between the physical and the virtual worlds. Terms like “mobile tagging” or “object hyperlinking” refer to smartphones’ ability to recognize an object and to call up information from the Internet that is specific to that object. This is accomplished through image recognition (a computer science technique that is becoming ever more effective), the reading of a QR code (a format that is fast gaining in popularity, especially in Europe and Japan, and is promoted by Microsoft in the U.S.), or the scanning of the ubiquitous barcode.

For example, when you see something of interest in the “real” world – say a product or an ad – you can take a snapshot with your camera phone, and the phone, equipped with the right app, can recognize the product and allow you to “interact” with “it” right then and there. Scanning a barcode while in a store, can give a shopper real-time access to price-comparison data; reading the QR code printed on a magazine ad can bring up the advertiser’s web page directly on the handheld; and a number of apps can visually recognize book covers and other items just to bring up the corresponding shopping cart at your e-tailer of choice. Regardless of whether this interaction is enabled through image recognition or code scanning (or other emerging techniques for object identification), it is my belief that people will increasingly use their smartphones to take pictures of physical objects (shopping goods, print ads, display windows, movie posters, showcases, billboards, etc.) or “check in” at physical locations (à la Foursquare, Gowalla, and shopkick) in order to instantly obtain object- or place-specific information from the web.

With a purpose-built mobile app, a person’s smartphone will not only “know” the shopper’s location but also “carry” detailed, yet hopefully anonymized consumer data which can be used by nearby merchants to issue precisely targeted specials and preferred pricing offers by sending coupons to the phone. These digital coupons are then scanned from the phone’s screen at checkout and thus redeemed. And for extra credit, every time a consumer snaps an item or registers at a location, there is an opportunity to capture a meaningful piece of marketing data: the voluntary and self-motivated signal of interest at the time and place of encounter with any particular merchandise, commercial, or store location. Marketers consider a compilation of such indications of interest a powerful predictor of future consumer behavior, second perhaps only to a shopper’s past purchase history. And, of course, with access to such consumer information in real time – i.e., if products, ads, and storefronts “knew” something about you – that encounter becomes that much more meaningful, as the product pitch can now be tailored to your preferences.

Finally, who knew Coleridge (Jr. nonetheless) had a thing for IT budgets which are customarily cut at the beginning of the year: “The merry year is born like the bright berry from the naked thorn.” Beautiful, of course. Perhaps just as beautiful as being able to stretch your budget to do more with less and to implement some impressive mobile- and social media strategies without going for broke already in the first quarter. Our company Talent Trust (http://www.talenttrust.com/) has helped many traditional, brick-and-mortar firms devise and cost-effectively implement such strategies – with flexible access to highly skilled IT professionals located offshore. Please feel free to contact me (christophe.kolb@talenttrust.com) should you be thinking about building mobile apps and social media platforms to influence and captivate consumer audiences. Talent Trust has a ten-year history of creating successful technology solutions for delighted clients such as Accenture, Agilent, Autodesk, Brady, CMA CGM, CompuCom, Continuous Computing, Critical Mass, Elan Computing, eMeter, Euro RSCG, GE, IBM, Major League Baseball, Manpower, McAfee, Medtronic, Suzuki, Taylor Corporation, Verizon, Zynga, and many more.

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Christophe Kolb

Christophe is one of the original pioneers of the technology-enabled remote services industry.

He co-founded Talent Trust (http://www.talenttrust.com) in 2000 to help clients meet their staffing needs with flexible access to highly skilled IT professionals located offshore.

Talent Trust, the reliable and flexible offshore partner you’ve come to know and trust over the last decade is now tightly focused on providing innovative and affordable mobile solutions for the enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, Talent Trust employs mobile experts at our own development centers in Córdoba, Argentina and Lima, Peru.

What Makes Us Different? Experience the Power of Global Entrepreneurship.
Completely hands on and entrepreneurial to the core, our overseas management teams and senior developers have a direct interest in the success of their operation. This incentive model promotes long term resource continuity and ensures unconditional alignment with our clients’ success. As a result, our employees treat their clients’ projects as their own and infuse each engagement with an entrepreneur’s “must win” spirit – in contrast to the “nine to five” norm.

Backed by a Team of Local Experts.
In addition, a dedicated San Francisco-based engagement management team guarantees our clients’ satisfaction, specifically taking over the extra tasks associated with offshoring that arise from physical separation. An integral part of the Talent Trust offering, this onshore service is designed to take the friction out of working remotely and ranges in scope from: screening, matching, and allocating the resources; to monitoring their work along with productivity metrics, reporting on progress and project milestones, and facilitating communication; all the way to flagging and resolving any problems, timekeeping, and billing.

Are you looking to build valuable and cost-effective IT solutions that will help your company win in business? And are you looking for entrepreneurial resources that will go the extra mile to ensure your success? Then please visit our web site www.talenttrust.com to learn more, or contact me directly at christophe.kolb@talenttrust.com.

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Christophe Kolb

Christophe is one of the original pioneers of the technology-enabled remote services industry.

He co-founded Talent Trust (http://www.talenttrust.com) in 2000 to help clients meet their staffing needs with flexible access to highly skilled IT professionals located offshore.

Talent Trust, the reliable and flexible offshore partner you’ve come to know and trust over the last decade is now tightly focused on providing innovative and affordable mobile solutions for the enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, Talent Trust employs mobile experts at our own development centers in Córdoba, Argentina and Lima, Peru.

What Makes Us Different? Experience the Power of Global Entrepreneurship.
Completely hands on and entrepreneurial to the core, our overseas management teams and senior developers have a direct interest in the success of their operation. This incentive model promotes long term resource continuity and ensures unconditional alignment with our clients’ success. As a result, our employees treat their clients’ projects as their own and infuse each engagement with an entrepreneur’s “must win” spirit – in contrast to the “nine to five” norm.

Backed by a Team of Local Experts.
In addition, a dedicated San Francisco-based engagement management team guarantees our clients’ satisfaction, specifically taking over the extra tasks associated with offshoring that arise from physical separation. An integral part of the Talent Trust offering, this onshore service is designed to take the friction out of working remotely and ranges in scope from: screening, matching, and allocating the resources; to monitoring their work along with productivity metrics, reporting on progress and project milestones, and facilitating communication; all the way to flagging and resolving any problems, timekeeping, and billing.

Are you looking to build valuable and cost-effective IT solutions that will help your company win in business? And are you looking for entrepreneurial resources that will go the extra mile to ensure your success? Then please visit our web site www.talenttrust.com to learn more, or contact me directly at christophe.kolb@talenttrust.com.